


those who endure in peace

by rosepetalfall



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosepetalfall/pseuds/rosepetalfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Physician, heal thyself,</i> but Gene’s not a physician and maybe there are days he wishes (blasphemy, of course, but what do people expect?) that he could work miracles like the son of God, but he’s not that either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those who endure in peace

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the characters in the HBO show Band of Brothers, not real people. No disrespect intended. Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans!

In Bastogne, when he wakes, it always either suddenly, certain someone is calling for him, or too slowly. Cold is bad for the instincts.

 _Physician, heal thyself,_ but Gene’s not a physician and maybe there are days he wishes (blasphemy, of course, but what do people expect?) that he could work miracles like the son of God, but he’s not that either.

And he is not his grandmother, with her mysterious, star-like eyes. 

When men have died in his arms, he has never been able to draw away their pain. (Giving hope is not the same as taking away pain.) Screaming or silent, stoic or terrified - they die in pain or they die lulled away by morphine. 

_Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace._

“Doc,” Heffron says, “take it. You gotta eat.”

There is a woman in the church in Bastogne and he recognizes her touch, sees the gift he longs for, and she is beautiful like a painting and she tosses him a bar of chocolate and he misses his mother (does she get his letters, his letters that say so little?). 

There is a woman in the church in Bastogne and she wants to heal him but there’s no time and then it is too late. 

_Physician, heal thyself_ and maybe Gene’s not a physician and he surely isn’t holy, but they were shelled on Christmas Day, so maybe holy ain’t even got to be part of equation. (God gave the world His only son and His son was human, wasn’t he? But then Gene’s no padre.)

He drops into Heffron’s foxhole up on the line.

 _Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace._

-

People tend to assume Gene’s just a real calm guy, naturally, and it’s not entirely untrue. But it’s only because other people don’t know how to be calm the way Gene’s learned to be calm. Gene is calm when everyone else can’t be. Gene is calm when people need someone calm because he’s good at being what’s needed of him and he is angry on those occasions when anger is necessary. (He is even-handed but they are at war and he does not have the time to tolerate stupidity or indulge anyone’s good intentions but bad execution, because when you’re racing death you better be fast, no distractions, son.)

Gene grew up in one of those little towns in the bayou that don’t make it onto maps, until the town was abandoned so the Army Corps of Engineers could better harness the raging Mississippi (President Roosevelt wanted men working, bringing electricity and running water to the country and Gene understands that, but sometimes gaining something means losing something else). They’d gone to New Orleans, after that, their accents not quite right, in English or in French. 

He has two older sisters and one younger one. Daddy died when he was fifteen, but Gene’s Mama said he had to finish school, couldn’t quit now, even if it meant waking early to go out on the shrimp trawlers at dawn and running into class late, smelling like the Gulf, towing his little sister Marie with him. Couldn’t quit now, even though there was the Depression and they’d come to live in a city where the heat made death stink and each hurricane season turned the whole population into a bunch of gamblers.

He is not so much calm as he is calmer than others are. Things will happen, whether you want them to or not, and Gene knew that early (rising winds coming in off the Gulf, this will be the year or it won’t be, this will be the storm or it won’t be).

He learned to pray early, too. 

(He has never prayed like this before. Never had reason.)

-

The church in Rachamps is like a little piece of the world to come, golden and ethereal, warm and candlelit.

“Sure is somethin’,” Perconte mumbles, from where he’s laid out, half asleep, by Gene’s side. 

“Yeah,” Gene agrees. He turns towards Perconte and says, quiet and steady, “I gotta send you back to the aide station tomorrow. I’d ‘preciate it if you didn’t argue.”

Perconte sighs. “Yeah, sure, Doc. I’ll just be back, y’know.”

Gene look away, back to the choir. They are so young.

“You got any sisters, Perconte?”

“Huh?”

“Sisters. You got any?”

“Yeah,” Perconte says, puzzled, “two. Couple of brothers. Uh, what about you?”

“Three sisters,” Gene says. “You writin’ to them?”

Perconte frowns slightly. “My sisters? Yeah.”

“Good,” Gene says. “That’s good. You can tell ‘em you gonna get yourself a Purple Heart.”

Perconte eyes him for a moment, forehead furrowed, and then says, “Yeah,” and closes his eyes again. 

-

And so: He’s a good medic, all in all. 

That’s what people tell him, and he tries to believe it. Lipton tells him, looking him straight on in the eyes, using careful words that almost disguise the probing, but not his honest-to-God good nature. Lieutenant Foley says it, squeezing Gene’s upper arm, above his medic’s band. Winters does, too, occasionally, more frequently now, after Bastogne (he’s perceptive, Winters). Sometimes the nurses or the doctors at the aide stations, if they have enough time to comment on the quality of his work (rarely, then).

Mostly it’s Spina, in a tone that’s part admiration, part concern. Spina’s friendly, is the thing.

And that’s fine. That works for Spina. (Medic got shot outside Carentan had been like that, friendly, a joker, called Gene ‘Chief’ and had a girl back home whose picture he kept in his pocket. He didn’t die, at least.)

And Spina is Gene’s friend, after all. 

Spina out right says that he don’t particularly like wearing his Red Cross badge or any of the rest of it, really, but he’s good at it, even if it hasn’t settled into his bones the way it has for Gene. 

(They say joining the priesthood is answering the call, they say joining the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines is answering the call, but it took until well into Normandy, running through the forest to get to a bleeding man, for Gene to think maybe he understood what they were trying to say after all.)

In Rachamps, Gene believes, again, in God and peace and his own ability to save lives. 

They have to move out again, of course.

-

By Hagenau, grief and weariness have settled into everyone’s skin just like the grime. The weight they haul around with them, in them, is only exacerbated by the tumbling feeling that the war must be almost done, has to be almost done (if they can just make it through to tomorrow and the next day and the day after until -). 

Gene can tell Lipton to rest, can do inventory with Spina, can check to make sure no one’s getting fevers.

He can’t bring Malarkey back to himself. He can’t get to Kiehn on time. (This will be the year or it will not.)

“I’m just so fucking tired,” Babe says, after coming to tell Gene there’s going to be a patrol tonight, be prepared for possible casualties. “I mean, Gene,” he says and then does not continue.

“I know,” Gene says. “Salright to be tired, Babe.”

Babe shakes his head. “No, it ain’t.” He looks down, shakes his head again and says, “You eat yet? You better eat. Gonna be up late tonight.”

“Yeah,” Gene says. “I ate. You go get ready with the rest of ‘em. Me and Spina’ll get our stuff together.”

Babe nods and turns to go. 

“Listen,” Gene says, even though maybe he shouldn’t, he’s got no true assurance to give. “You ain’t goin’ that far. Just across that river and back.”

“Yeah. Just across the river and back,” Babe echoes, his back to Gene. 

Jackson dies that night. 

Gene runs and he talks low and smooth like his mama used to do when they got fevers and he’s fast, no distractions (people get quiet when he runs into a room, now, the way animals do before a storm or the way believers do when a holy man speaks), but Death wins anyway.

He lets Sergeant Martin take charge of the body. Some days are just harder than others and Gene can feel the hollow freeze of Bastogne in his marrow and in the tremor of his fingers. 

He walks back to the room Spina and he are in (about the only sensible thing Gene ever heard Dike say is that two medics oughtn’t be staying in the same place in case they got hit but sometimes sense don’t have nothing to do with it). 

One foot in front of the other. This is how to keep going, he tells himself. 

Some time later, Hefferon comes into the room and sits down on the edge of the lower bunk, where Gene’s staring at his boots.

After a moment of silence, Babe says, “I hate this. I hate this. I hate this,” his hands in his hair. 

Gene shifts closer to him, until their boots almost touch, and rests his hand on Babe’s back, smoothing over the space between his shoulder blades. (Spina is good at this - holding the ones left behind, asking distracting questions. If Gene knows how to give hope to bleeding men, Spina knows how to comfort the ones who have to watch.)

“Yeah,” Gene says. “I know. I know. Jackson - he was so young. Same age as my little sister. I was just thinkin’ that earlier today. But there weren’t nothing we could do.”

(Gene still isn’t quite sure what it is that killed Jackson, specifically. It’d been too fast and Jackson’d been panicking - impossible to account for all the factors - Gene knows it. It still feels like failure.)

Spina comes in then, pauses in the doorway, holding two mugs, and looks at both of them for a moment. Then he clears his throat. 

“Tea,” he says. “For both of you. Then you oughtta try to sleep.” He sighs. “Maybe they’ll move us out of here soon.” 

-

If Bastogne scraped away at his soul, then Landsberg kills something in Gene. He knows that, he feels it, simple as a fact - this is the femoral artery; this is the tibia - and there’s no time to dwell on it. 

(He knows wounds and trench foot and how to triage and put in an IV, but no one ever, ever told him there would be anything like this.)

He has to keep going, he knows that. Can’t be done until the war is, but after Landsberg, he prays more fervently than ever, with the increasingly faint taste-memory of Gulf seawater in his mouth. He prays that after this, there will be no more call for what he does. 

(He doesn’t know if he can believe the way he ought to anymore, the way he once did, kneeling in the dirt, so maybe it’s for the best he never attended Father Maloney’s services.)

So close to the end, there should be no more for him to do.

(He knows already that this isn’t a prayer God, if He still listens, can answer. Gene, somehow, never ever sees Death ‘til Death’s already snuck in some side door, come and gone while Gene was trying to seal the gaping holes in the wall.)

-

The Alps are something out of a painting and there’s so much sunlight. The breezes are light and warm, like carasses. (The last time Gene saw the ocean, or well, his ocean anyway, was a long time ago, now, but he almost understands, for perhaps the first time, how you might never hear the call of the water. How if you lived among mountains like these, with sights that take your lungs and squeeze, you might never want to leave.)

The streets of Berchtesgaden are almost eerily empty of their old inhabitants.

“Man,” Spina mutters, re-shouldering his medic’s bag. “Look at these damn buildings. These people were rich as all hell, huh?”

Gene squints against the sunlight. “Looks like it.”

“You think these things are what people call villas?” Spina asks. “Like in movies, all those European people with their fuckin’ villas?”

Gene smirks. “Ralph, why you askin’ me? Wouldn’t know a villa if I saw one.”

“Well, that’s clear,” Spina grins back. 

“A’right,” Gene says. “C’mon, let’s see if we can take some of their fancy linens and turn ‘em into bandages for our boys, huh?”

“Doc, you got a real over-developed sense of fun,” Spina says, slinging an arm around Gene’s shoulders. 

“Laissez les bons temps rouler,” Gene says easily. “I’m a real fun guy. In fact, you know what? You find any silk or satin sheets, you keep ‘em and send ‘em back to your lady.”

“Satin?” Spina laughs. “People actually use that for sheets? Outside of bordellos?”

“Bordello? That’s a real big word, Ralph. Where you learn that one?” Gene teases. “You been up to somethin’ when I weren’t lookin’?”

“Shit, Gene,” Spina says, “even if I wasn’t married, I’ve seen enough VD to almost put me off the whole thing altogether.” 

(Gene was not sure he could laugh any more. Maybe he’ll be able to survive peace when it comes, after all.) 

-

Zell am See, extraordinarily beautiful Zell am See, is the first time Gene goes into a proper operating theater.

“You come with me,” the surgeon says, after they unload Grant at the hospital. 

Gene’s eyebrows shoot up automatically. “Me? I’m just a medic,” he says. 

“Yes,” the surgeon agrees. “And so you know his medical history.” It’s half a question, half a statement.

Gene nods. He does know.

(This is how he sees them - flashes of names and faces and wounds and cases of walking pneumonia.)

He doesn’t actually do anything, of course - inexperience is a killer - just walks in with them, doling out snippets of Grant’s life by way of scratches and injuries, coughs and rashes. He holds Grant’s hand until he can’t. Then he watches.

“It’s amazin’, what you do,” Gene says, after they walk out. 

(Captain Speirs left looking all blazing and fearsome like an Old Testament prophet, ready to bring the fear of God to the people, and that’s worrying, it is, but Gene declined a ride back anyway because maybe _first, do no harm_ doesn’t count if he’s not the one harming or even seeing the harm done - and he’s so tired - or maybe he’s got too little faith in Speirs). 

The surgeon shrugs. “I am good at my job,” he says baldly, conceding to neither false modesty nor pride. 

“If I knew what you did -” Gene says and then stops. If the doctor will not indulge himself, neither should Gene. It’s harder to remember that here, where the mountains are more than Gene could ever have imagined.

The surgeon lights a cigarette and says, “It is brain surgery. To be good takes many, many years. And even then,” he pauses and tilts his head, “only sometimes it is successful. The brain is . . . delicate. Even if you were one of my students, I would say you are too young. You could not have saved him.”

“But you did,” Gene says.

The doctor frowns. “We will see. Alive is not always saved, no?”

Gene nods. There’s nothing to say to that and Gene’s never been a talker anyway. 

“Best be getting back to the men,” he says after a few moments of silence. 

The surgeon nods. “I will find someone to drive you,” he agrees. 

“Salright. No need,” Gene says. 

The surgeon shakes his head. “I will find someone,” he repeats, dropping his cigarette and stubbing it out with his foot. 

-

The war ends - V-J Day. 

They’re going home. 

Gene’s the one who gets to tell Spina. Spina drops the box he’s holding. Gene laughs until his eyes water and he’s short of breath, seeing Spina’s delirious, shocked face.

“Jesus, Gene,” Babe says, lounging in the doorway, sun warmed. “You been holding onto that the whole war or something? You better not be crackin’ on us now.”

“Nah, Babe,” Gene says. “I’m doin’ real well. Aren’t you?”

“Not the worst day I’ve had,” Babe agrees, grinning. “Feelin’ pretty good.”

When Gene laughs again, this time Babe does, too.

-

The trip home is like the reverse of shipping out to Aldbourne, for all of the vast differences in the men aboard. They pull into New York, gliding past the statue of Lady Liberty, her torch held high. On their way out, Gene had been walking through the rows of hammocks, checking for signs of sea sickness, but this time, he’s crowded up against the railing with a small section of Easy, almost of short of breath at the sight of the rising city.

“Give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” murmurs Webster, learning forward so that his torso is half over the railing.

“She was Jewish, y’know,” Liebgott says, squinting against the dying evening light. “Lady who wrote that poem.”

“Yeah?” asks Sisk. His hair has gone wild in the wind. 

“Yeah,” Liebgott says. Then he elbows Webster in the ribs. “C’mon, Webster, you started, now you gotta finish, huh?”

Webster pulls one of those faces like when he’s not sure if he’s being mocked but is going to assume so, to be on the safe side. He looks like that sort of a lot, Gene thinks, distantly sympathetic.

But then Webster turns back to look out over the harbor, the approaching city. 

“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp at the golden door,” he concludes.

“Tempest-tossed, huh?” Babe says. 

“Well, we all fuckin’ been that, haven’t we?” Liebgott mutters.

Gene closes his eyes. “Listen,” he says. “Can you hear the people waiting at the Shipyard?”

They all fall silent at that, taking in the shouting of the other men onboard, the growl of the ship’s engine, the slap of the brackish water against the hull, the hoarse call of seagulls and beyond that - 

“Yeah, Doc,” Sisk says. “I can.”

-

From New York, they all board trains and buses headed out across the country. Gene wonders if this is the last time he’ll be seeing them, the men - wonders if this is the last time Winters will be seeing them, wonders if he’s okay with that. But it’s not Gene’s job anymore, to bring Winters coffee instead of the comfort he probably needs but would never ask for.

So he stops wondering and starts thinking about home in a way he’s never let himself until now.

He stares at his hands (clean, now, very clean - he and Spina both wash their hands constantly now that they are free to do so easily). 

_Happy those who endure in peace, for by You, Most High, they will be crowned._

Gene’s train South is leaving just an hour after the one Spina and Babe are taking out to Philadelphia, so he goes to crowded Pennsylvania Station with them that morning.

Babe is jittery in a way Gene doesn’t think he’s ever seen him before, not even before the Market Garden jump, compulsively rearranging his stuff, bouncing his knee up and down. Spina looks amused. Gene is calm because at the moment, he is floating in that place in his mind where all things are equanimous - they are back in the States and he has seen Death and there is a train coming to take him home and he has years left in this body. 

“Breathe, Heffron,” Gene says. “Ain’t gonna do your mama no good if you run outta your own skin now.”

Babe looks at him and pulls a face. “Is that even a real expression? Honestly?”

Gene shrugs and smiles.

“Don’t understand how the two of you’re so calm,” Babe mutters. “Not natural.”

Spina grins. “Babe, I’m going home. Gonna see my wife, gonna finally meet my baby girl. That’s nothing to be nervous about. That’s the goddamn reward.”

Babe cracks a smile, soft, the way he gets about children sometimes. “Yeah, alright, Spina. Show us the picture again.”

Spina grins, a little silly, and pulls out a worn photograph of his wife, cradling their infant daughter and tilts it over towards Babe and Gene.

“Still don’t know how you got lady like that to marry you,” Babe says. 

“You ever seen any of the letters he sent her?” Gene asks, lighting a cigarette. “Darlin’, when I come home, I will hold you and never again -” he mimics. 

Spina reaches around Babe to steal Gene’s cigarette. “This kid,” he informs Babe, “did such a job on all of you, makin’ you think he was some kind of angel. Not the case, let me tell you.”

“Aww,” Babe says, slinging an arm over Gene’s shoulders, “don’t talk that way about Doc. Man was just tryin’ to compliment your writing skills.”

Gene gives his best Sunday Mass smile and Spina shakes his head, smirking. 

“Sure,” Spina says, “you make excuses for him. I know better.”

Gene glances up to the time table and down to his wristwatch and says, “Better get goin’. Your train’s boarding.”

Spina and Babe both reach for their things. Gene reaches out, automatically, to fix the twisted strap of Babe’s bag. 

“Gonna walk us down to the platform?” Babe asks, accepting the help without question. 

“Sure,” Gene says. 

There are a quite a few of them, boys in uniform, filtering down onto the platform with them. Boisterous, mostly, though some of them seem a little lost, a little perplexed to find themselves here.

“Alright,” Spina says, taking a deep breath, looking down to the end of the train (he’s already racing home in his mind, Gene’s sure).

“Alright, Spina,” Gene says.

Then Spina pulls him into a tight hug and squeezes. Gene holds him back (they’re alive).

“You’re gonna come up to Philly and meet Maria and Maggie one day soon,” Spina says, when he pulls away. A statement, not a question.

“Sure,” Gene says. “I’ll come.” 

Spina smiles like he knows that’s a promise Gene’s not actually committed himself to, but holds out his hand to shake anyway. 

“Well, been a hell of ride,” he says.

“Sure has,” Gene agrees, giving Spina the firm handshake Gene learned off Winters years ago now. He doesn’t have the right words for this situation. He pulls his lips in (a nervous habit that war only made worse) and bites them for a second. 

Spina glances towards Babe, who’s scuffing the toe of his boot against the ground, and then back to Gene. Spina half-smiles and says, “You got my address. Write when you get home, Doc,” and grabs his stuff, climbing into the nearest compartment door.

“Will do. You take care of yourself, Spina,” Gene says, as Spina pauses in the doorway. “And send me a picture of the baby, huh? She musta grown by now.” 

Spina’s smile blooms into a full out grin. He nods and disappears into the train car. 

Babe’s smiling slightly, too, but still looking at the ground. 

“You plannin’ on gettin’ on, Babe?” Gene asks. 

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ on,” Babe says, looking up, eyes amused. Then his face dims, grows pale so that his freckles stand out. “It’s just, Gene,” he says and pauses. 

“Hey, Heffron,” Gene says, quiet and serious now (his last diagnosis, he thinks). “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with you. I’d know if there were.”

“How d’you even know if that was what I was going to ask?” Babe asks. “Maybe that’s not what I was going to say.”

“I just know things, Edward,” Gene says, in one of those affected, portentous voices the streetside fortune tellers in New Orleans always put on. 

Babe laughs. “Alright, whatever you say, Doc.”

“Better,” Gene nods. 

Then Babe reaches out and hugs him fiercely. Gene tightens his own arms around Babe’s back, feeling the strength of his spine. 

Then, carefully, he pulls away. 

“Make sure you write,” Gene says. “I ain’t got no confidence your ability to take care of yourself, so I’m gonna need proof you’re alive.”

Babe makes a face at him. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” he protests. 

Gene laughs. “Okay,” he agrees. “Then get on the goddamn train before it leaves without you.”

Babe rolls his eyes and takes an exaggeratedly heavy step onto the train. Then he half-turns back to Gene and swallows. “You take care of yourself, too, huh?” he says.

Gene nods. “I’ll be seein’ you, Babe.”

Babe nods, in profile.

“Seeya, Gene,” he says and then he enters the train car and is gone. 

Gene stands there, just a moment longer, as the train groans and begins to pull away. 

-

Gene gets himself a construction job because it seems appropriate, maybe even poetic, using his hands to build, and he’s good with tools and all.

He wants to like it and it’s satisfying, sometimes, to stand back and see what he’s done. But mostly, it’s not quite what he imagined.

It doesn’t take his mind off the war. It’s patterned and Gene’s good with patterns (wasn’t a medic because he was stupid) but he can’t write over the muscle memory of stitches with a hammer and nails. 

It’s physical labor and at the end of the day he’s tired but his mind won’t quiet, so he keeps his body in constant motion, even with his muscles aching. 

“You used to be so still,” his older sister, Emilie, says, watching him read and shift in his seat every few pages. She’d had a whirlwind romance with a boy just as America joined the war - she’d only known Caleb two months when they’d gotten married. She spent the war living with their mother and Marie, in the apartment Gene’s come back to, though it no longer feels like home. 

“Now,” Emilie says, “you can never seem to get comfortable.”

“You ain’t a doctor,” Gene says, flipping a page in his book, though he's barely following the plot. “Just leave it. I’m fine.”

“Well,” she says, turning away, “you ain’t a doctor either, Gene.” 

-

A few months gone, Spina sends another new picture of his daughter, seated on his lap, already older than the infant Gene has been imagining. She looks like a happy kid, Gene thinks, though he doesn’t know anything about babies. 

Most of the letter that accompanies the photograph is mundane, about Spina’s wife and the habits of his baby, about his neighborhood and his city, about how strange and relieving Spina finds it to be doing work that isn’t bandaging wounds and trying to treat trenchfoot. 

Near the end of the letter though is this: _Saw old Bill Guarnere last week, which I thought you would like to know. He’s doing real well, much better than I thought. He’s speedy on those crutches. He got married, too. His wife is a real firecracker! Just the kind of lady Wild Bill needs to keep him in line, I guess. And get this, he’s going to start college! (Maybe you ought to try that too.) Anyway, near the end of my visit, Bill said something about how it would be nice to see everyone again. I said I couldn’t imagine how he didn’t get enough of us all during the war, but he seemed pretty genuine about it. I told him I would be writing you soon and he said to tell you he says hello and thanks for everything you did over there. Mrs. Guarnere sends her best too._

Gene didn’t give most of the men his address (though not many had asked for it - he hadn’t minded because it was a sign that he was being absolved of his duties, that their lives were no longer cupped, fragile but so heavy, in his hands) - partly because of this, wanting to avoid any misplaced messages of gratitude for doing his job the way they’d done their own. 

But it’s not the news or the secondhand thanks that stick in Gene’s mind. 

_Maybe you ought to try that too._

He hasn’t prayed, not in weeks, even though he’s going to church again, for his mother’s sake.

_Maybe you ought to try that too._

That ordinary men may rise to occasions that demand their service, that ordinary men can be capable of extraordinary valor: these are lessons the war taught Gene.

It also taught him to run. 

Maybe he doesn’t know how to stop, any more. Maybe he’s only been fooling himself into thinking he could. 

Maybe the only true option is to keep moving, now. 

In New York, waiting for his train alone now, he’d met a man from India, a university student studying economics. 

“We’re told our prophet once said, ‘Seek knowledge even unto China,’” the man had explained. “And that, I suppose, is what I am here to do.”

Gene had nodded, stowed that thought away for future contemplation, impressed by the man’s neat, scholarly demeanor. There was something about him that reminded Gene of Winters - his dignity, maybe, or maybe it was just that Gene was feeling unmoored.

Gene’s got no delusions. If he went, college wouldn’t be like that. It wouldn’t be all dignified foreign gentlemen talking to him about God and Karl Marx like he had something to contribute other than an intimate knowledge of torn flesh.

But torn flesh is what he knows and he isn’t his grandmother, doesn’t have her gift, but it’s a new age, an age of bombs and brain surgery, airplanes and antibiotics. And so maybe it’s Gene’s time - he’s got no magic and no blessings but he knows needles and plasma.

The officers had gone to college. Most of the men, like Gene, hadn’t and they’d been curious. Like Gene.

“You’d be a real good doctor,” Shifty Powers told him once, painfully earnest (it had been early days, still, Gene remembers). “You know, the official kind. Wouldn’ta minded goin’ to the doctor so much as a kid if it’d been you.” 

_Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find,_ says the voice in Gene’s mind that he thinks of as his Daddy’s (Gene can’t be sure, anymore, how Daddy sounded).

And so: maybe it’s time, again, to believe God might just listen after all.

-

Gene moves to Baton Rouge for school. He’s going to study biology.

Marie, little Marie who’s a real lady now, stares at him, gives him that look that reminds him of their grandmere, as if she can see through him like an x-ray. 

“You don’t _got_ to do nothin’, you know that, don’tcha, Gene?” she asks. 

“Oui, cher,” Gene says, affectionate. “But it ain’t right to ignore a calling, either.”

-

 _Are you happy?_ asks Heffron in one of his sporadic but lengthy letters. _I can’t tell whether I’m happy. I know I should be, but sometimes I’m just not and I don’t know how I can’t be happy if Bill can. It’s been almost three years since we got home and if everyone else has moved on, why can’t I?_

Gene pictures Heffron sitting at his unsturdy table down here in Baton Rouge, a city farther South than Babe’s ever been, hands folded, like giving confession (maybe Gene and Father Maloney had never been so different, but that’s in the past now). It’s comforting, in a way, to be the receptacle of his men’s ailments, still, even after the distance of miles and years. 

_I don’t know if I’m happy, but I’m not unhappy and maybe that’s enough for right now,_ Gene writes back. _If you’re not happy, I guess you’ve got as much a right as anyone to feel that way. I think war must be a chronic disease - not something you get once and get over. Don’t think most of us got immune really even when things were bad. I guess we all going to carry it in our own ways._

War never made a poet out of him, but peace might. 

( _Oh, Lord, grant that I may not so much seek_  
_to be consoled as to console_  
_to be understood as to understand_  
_or to be loved as to love with all my heart._

It’s a prayer he hasn’t said in years, but he doesn’t need to, really, any more. He thinks it’s embedded, now, somewhere beneath his skin.)

-

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not Christian and while I am a religion student, Christianity is far from my area of study, so if you feel I've misinterpreted anything or been disrespectful, please let me know and I'll definitely do my best to correct myself. Or if there are any historical or regional inaccuracies, again, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to fix up those errors.
> 
> References/quotes in the fic are, in chronological order: Luke 4:23, the Prayer of St. Francis (the latter portion of which Doc Roe says in Bastogne), Primum non nocere (bioethical maxim - similar to the Hippocratic oath), "The New Colossus," by Emma Lazarus, as inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty - Lazarus was indeed Jewish, the Canticle of the Sun by St. Francis of Assisi - this is the quote that has given the fic its title, the Hadith, Matthew 7:7, and of course, at the end, the Prayer of St. Francis, again.


End file.
